Apple iPhone vs. LG Vu

VS.

The latest entry into the smartphone game from LG came out several months before the new iPhone, but comparisons are already being bandied about. Here’s our entry into that ongoing debate:

Both the new iPhone and the LG Vu run on the AT&T network and are 3G network compatible which means that all other considerations being equal, their speeds should be comparable. Both devices are touchscreen smartphones, although whereas the LG Vu has haptic feedback (aka tactile feedback), which the iPhone sadly does not have, it still isn’t as responsive to the touch as the iPhone touchscreen. Both devices have a built-in 2 megapixel camera and are Bluetooth capable.

Call quality is better on LG Vu; picture quality is better on the iPhone. The display screen on the iPhone is half an inch bigger than that of the LG Vu, at 3.5” against just 3”. The iPhone has a 480x320 pixel resolution while the LG Vu only has a pixel resolution of 240 x 400.

The LG Vu offers MMS messaging and supports streaming TV while the iPhone does not. But the iPhone has WiFi, GPS, GoogleMaps, YouTube, and a fully-featured web browser (namely Safari) while the LG Vu has none of them. Like the iPhone’s web browser, however, the web browser on the LG Vu does give you the option of switching back and forth between portrait and landscape mode. Alas, neither browser supports Flash.

The iPhone has a larger built-in memory capacity with both an 8 gig and a 16 gig version, whereas the LG Vu only has an internal memory of only 120 megs. The memory card slot of the iPhone is external, which is more convenient and far preferable to most users than the internal slot of smartphones like the LG Vu that require you remove the battery and SIM card in order to access it.

With its new enhanced battery, talk-time on the Apple iPhone is up to 8 hours while the AT&T LG Vu only has a talk-time of up to 180 minutes. Standby time on both device is comparable at just under 10 1/2 days.

As for look and feel, the look of both devices is quite similar, with the screen occupying most of the face of the device, sporting 3 utilitarian buttons below it, but the feel of the two competing smartphones are considerably different. The LG Vu is 4.24” tall x 2.16” wide x 0.51” thick, and weighs 3.16 oz; the iPhone is 4.5” tall x 2.4” wide x 0.46” thick, and weighs 4.8 oz. But while the LG Vu is lighter weight than the iPhone, by the same token it also feels more shoddily put together. This is in part, no doubt, because the LG Vu casing is made of plastic and the iPhone casing is metal.

Some reviewers sum up the difference between the two devices by stating that the iPhone is a better multimedia device and the LG Vu a better cell phone: simplistic, maybe, but also accurate.